


circuits and wires

by jaegerjagues



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: AU, F/M, Season 3 Spoilers, episode tag: 3x05, takes place during 3x05, this isn't EXPLICITLY entrapdak but you just gotta squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 07:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20111140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegerjagues/pseuds/jaegerjagues
Summary: There's something missing.Hordak just doesn't know what it is.





	circuits and wires

There’s something missing. 

Hordak has nearly everything he wants. The Horde has taken Thaymor, the new Force Captain is promising, Brightmoon will fall sometime in the next year at the latest. The only thing holding him back is the blasted portal.

But he can’t help but think there is an extra limb he’s supposed to have, an extra piece that was once present and is now inexplicably gone. Something that was there, something he wants _back_.

He just can’t place a finger on it, and it’s left everything just slightly off kilter. Like he exited the room and in his absence everything was moved just slightly to the left.

☪

Force Captain Scorpia brings him a Princess.

There has never been a real Princess in the Fright Zone. Most of them meet their ends against the Horde, but this one is different.

“This one, uh, surrendered. Sir.”_ Surrendered._ In his time on Etheria, none had willingly surrendered. There were the ones who allied themselves with him, and the ones the Horde conquered. __

_ __ _

_ __ _

And now there was this Princess. Cascades of purple pigtails, oil spattered coveralls, too-big boots. An excited, curious glint in her eyes despite the cuffs on her wrists and ankles. Words flying out of her mouth at a fast clip, a nonsensical jumble he isn’t going to waste his time trying to parse out.

“Put her in a cell,” he orders the Force Captain.

The line between conquered and surrendered has always been very fine.

☪

The Portal, _his_ portal, whirls to life. It grows, and grows, and--

Wobbles, just at the edges. Shakes, shudders, and then collapses in on itself in a fit of sparks. 

Hordak screams, guttural, slamming his hands down on the console. Why isn’t this working? Why has it never worked? He just needs it for a few moments, not forever, just long enough to get a signal out to Horde Prime. 

He storms out of his sanctum, cloak whirling around his legs in true melodramatic fashion. 

At the rate his experiments are going, he’s never going to succeed. He will die here, alone, in this wretched place. Glory will not be had by him, redemption in the eyes of Horde Prime never achieved. 

Everything will have been for nothing. The very thought makes anger curl in his gut, hot and sharp and acrid. 

He turns down a dark hall and makes it three entire steps before stopping his tracks. 

There is a Horde bot in this hall, active where it shouldn’t be, wobbling on it’s spider-like limbs. The purple glow from it’s systems drive back little of the dark, except--

Except the light should be red. Not purple. 

The bot slams into the wall, then takes a few steps back. And then it slams into the wall again and repeats the process. 

Wonderful. Malfunctioning bots are exactly what he needs at a time like this. When the domination of Etheria is so close he can nearly taste it, when his attempts at creating a Portal to leave this dreadful backwater fail again and again, when Shadow Weaver moves against him and he can’t prove it because she has terrified Imp one too many times.

“Day eight,” a voice says from above him. “Emily’s sensors appear to be malfunctioning, must investigate.” 

The captive Princess dangles from the ceiling in front of him, feet tucked into the pipes. Bits of her hair run parallel to her legs, the rest of it hanging down with the ends brushing the floor. 

But then it rises up like arms, hands, like it has a mind of it’s own and he sees that she has things in it. Spanners, a recording device, a screwdriver. 

Her hair is prehensile. 

He stores that unimportant tidbit away. 

She opens the hatch on the bot and delves in with a surgeon’s precision, chit chattering away to the device in her hair. The Princess is completely oblivious to her surroundings, to the fact that he, Lord Hordak, stands but a few feet behind her. 

It’s both unfamiliar and bizzare. 

Force Captain Adora appears at the other end of the hall, that damned cat girl hanging off of her. The duo stops, dead in their tracks, when they see the Princess before them and Hordak behind her. 

“Get her back in a cell,” Hordak snarls at them, stalking back down the hall the way he came.

☪

His portal fails yet again.

Everything was supposed to go right, this time. His calculations had been precise, even after the adjustments he had made after the previous failures. Every bolt tightened, every connection secure. 

Why could nothing go right on this awful backwater space-rock?

He can’t look at his failure any longer. 

As he does when each test goes wrong, he leaves his sanctum. The ozone smell of fried wires, the gentle bubbling of the clone-growing pods--it’s too much of a reminder of his continued losses. Perhaps Horde Prime was right, and it was more than just his genetics that were a defect. 

It might very well be all of him, and all he hopes to achieve. 

He’s lost track of where within the Citadel he is when Imp lights on his shoulder, clacking sharp teeth together and tugging nervously on an ear. 

Hordak turns on his heel and beelines for his sanctum, Imp’s tail lashing with agitation. It’s times like this he wishes Imp had developed advanced vocal chords, so he could do more than just replay snatches of illicit conversations. So he could explain what he wanted without pantomiming ideas or being an annoying gnat until Hordak figures it out. 

There is noise carrying down the hall, growing louder and louder the closer he gets to where he started. 

He crosses the threshold, and isn’t sure what he expected. But it wasn’t this. 

It’s the Princess. She’s escaped somehow, yet again, and has made her way into his sanctum. 

He’s going to have the head of whomever is in charge of the prison mounted and put on display for all to see. Prisoners aren’t supposed to be able to escape. Especially not more than once. 

“What are you _doing_,” he demands, hands clasped tightly together behind his back. She’s invaded his space, has her hands and hair all over his things. She acts as though she belongs there, in his sanctum, like it’s her right. 

“It isn’t getting enough power!” she tells him excitedly, as if that explains everything.As if that explains just what, precisely, she’s doing out of her cell. 

“Test number one!” the Princess announces--to him or to her recorder, he isn’t sure. 

A chunk of her hair pulls the lever before he can properly get his wits about him. 

The technology hums, and the portal begins to form. It grows, slowly at first and then faster, growing larger than it ever has before. 

It’s going to work. It’s going to _work. It’s going to work._ IT’S GOING TO-- 

The portal destabilizes and fizzles out with a pop, leaving Hordak breathless with fury. 

“Huh,” the Princess says. “I thought for sure that would do it. Maybe if we--”

“Get out.” His voice is a quivering whisper of indignant rage, and the Horde’s supposed captive seems to be none-the-wiser. 

“I mean, obviously it needs a better power source. And maybe we should rewire everything for maximum efficiency, and--”

“GET OUT,” he roars. 

For a moment, the Princess stills.

But then she turns to him in a huff and says, “Just because it didn’t work doesn’t mean you have to be so upset. That’s the fun thing about science! The sparks, the explosions, the fires that nearly decimate your home! You just have to keep trying and changing things until it goes right!” 

Hordak takes half a step back from her sparkling red eyes and too bright smile. No one on this blasted planet has had the nerve to stay near him after he yells. No one’s ever been an optimist in his direction. 

The Princess takes the opening and turns back to the portal, muttering to herself as her hair pulls and prods at pieces of the portal tech.

☪

Shadow Weaver comes before him hours later, slithering in a way that tells him any news she bears is bad.

He wonders what it might be this time. Perhaps the Rebellion launched a successful counterattack, perhaps the Salinas Sea Gate still stands. There could be a rogue Force Captain on their hands, for all he knows. 

“My lord,” his second in command begins, hesitance dripping off her words. “One of the prisoners has . . . escaped.” 

Hordak’s hands tighten on the arms of his chair; beside him, Imp hisses in rage. 

“Which one?” On the other side of the room, out of Shadow Weaver’s sight, the escaped prisoner continues to work on getting the portal up and running, focused entirely on the task at hand. 

“The Princess from Dryl. Entrapta.”

There’s a loud crash,_ bang, _CLANG that draws their attention.

“I’m okay!” Entrapta shouts from beneath the pile of scrap, a boot the only visible sign that she resides within. “Slight miscalculation!” 

Hordak looks back to his unwanted guest, patience growing thin. 

“I . . . apologize for the lapse in security, my lord.” Shadow Weaver’s voice is like oil on his ears. “It will not happen again. I will make sure of it. Princess Entrapta, come along.”

“No,” Hordak bites out before he can stop himself. “She’s my . . .” He searches for a word, one that will do the job adequately without raising any of Shadow Weaver’s suspicions. “. . . assistant.” He stands abruptly, Imp clinging to his shoulders. “Leave.” 

Shadow Weaver stares at him for a moment, expression hidden behind that damnable mask. “Of course, my lord,” she says at length with a bow. 

He doesn’t look away until she has slunk entirely out of the room, taking some of the shadows with her. 

Turning, Imp squeals. 

There, very much in his personal space, standing on her tippy toes with her face as close to his as she can get, is the Princess Entrapta. The grin she wears is blinding, and her eyes practically sparkle. 

No one willingly gets this close to him. 

“You called me your assistant! Does this mean we’re friends?” she asks, bouncing up and down on the ends of her hair. The welding mask moves with her, jiggling and threatening to fall shut over her face.

“Partners,” he suggests instead, the word foreign on his tongue. He finds isn’t opposed to the taste of it, unlike the f-word she had uttered.

_Friends. _Preposterous. 

_“Lab partners!” _He winces from the volume. “I’ve never had a lab partner before! Ooh, ooh, this is gonna be so fun!”

There’s an echo in his skull, of Entrapta saying the same thing before--

Before what?

The thought is gone as soon as it occurs, Entrapa still chattering away as she bounds back to the portal technology, eager to get back to work. Imp soars after her, curious. Enthralled. 

His feeling of loss ebbs, unnoticed.


End file.
